Prime Minister fundraiser claim an abuse of position

I think we have reached a new low in this country when the Prime Minister admits using a great cancer research place like the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre to claim an allowance for being in Melbourne for a private function ("Juggling act earns ire for PM", August 27). On the same page, your paper reports there is a possibility that funds to assist hearing-impaired children will be cut ("Fears for deaf children", August 27).

We seem to have the most heartless and incompetent government ever to grace the corridors of power in this country.

Kathy Bradley Wollstonecraft

The Prime Minister has admitted that he scheduled an official function on Tuesday morning so that he could claim expense entitlements after being in Melbourne the night before for a private fund raiser. He has form in this area after previously claiming entitlements for attending a wedding and participating in an athletic event.

How is this essentially different from Peter Slipper's trip to the wineries for which he was prosecuted and found guilty of a fraud on the Commonwealth ?

Colin Simpson Menai

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I wonder what the directors of the Peter MacCullum Cancer Centre thought on Wednesday morning when they found they were just a taxpayer-funded travel rort for Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party.

Kay Kan Cheltenham

I'd never heard of the Peter McCallum Cancer Centre until it was named as the source of seed money for Kathy Jackson's murky bank account. Now the Prime Minister has apparently made a visit to the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre simply to justify taxpayer-funded travel entitlements to cover the cost of his trip to a political fund raiser? You couldn't write fiction this bad.

Iain Bailey Asquith

So the Captain of Team Australia gets a reprimand for being late to work, but fudging a work trip so the lifters can cover the cost of attending a private function is okay by the party room. The age of entitlement is alive and leaning well in Canberra.

I immediately sought details from the Minister for Science, who was unavailable for comment.

Steven Short Blacktown

The age of entitlement is over trumpets Treasurer Joe Hockey. What then to make of Prime Minister Abbott's admission that he scheduled an early morning visit to a cancer research centre so he could claim travel costs from the taxpayer for a trip to Melbourne the day before for a Liberal Party fund raiser?

Here we have a Prime Minister who is paid double the salary of the US president diddling the taxpayers for his travel costs. If he is not able to meet the travel costs while on party business it should be the Liberal party that pays, not the taxpayer. This fiasco highlights the need for a federal Independent Commission Against Corruption,

Simon Chance Richmond Hill

Tony Abbott has obviously learnt nothing from last year's travel rort scandals. He and his Team Australia bombard us with brainwashing messages like the age of entitlement is over, budget emergency and that the country can't afford leaners. He then attends at private function in Melbourne and arranges a quick "work" visit and press conference to conveniently justify claiming entitlements rather than paying his own way. It's a shameful, brazen abuse of his position and a contemptible waste of hard-earned taxpayers' money.

The authority was set up (at great taxpayers' expense) to ensure the gift of 22 hectares of public land to private developers didn't backfire. Ever since, the government has outlaid additional cash to prop up its very well-paid board. After all, we wouldn't want monkeys running the show, would we?

Now, as its chief executive departs, Sydneysiders must wake up to what's become a clear abuse of neoliberal planning mechanisms in NSW.

For generations, Barangaroo will tower over us indicative of a corrupted planning system, hijacked by both sides of politics in recent years. It will remain a testament to what happens when profit, not the public interest, drives planning.

Can government, hungry for revenue, any revenue at all, be trusted with the next big sell-off, another 80 hectares of public land around Rozelle and Blackwattle bays ("City backs summit on Bay Precinct", August 27)? Planning Minister Pru Goward's appearance at the budget estimates committee last week gives little confidence that it can. She must do more than pay lip service to whatever the proposed people's summit comes up with.

The Premier and his cabinet must invest immediately in some watertight safeguards that redefine our broader public interest as about more than just balancing the bottom line. Such a notion must then become the key objective that drives our planning system, not just the mere afterthought it's disgracefully become.

Nathan English Rozelle

Minister deaf to true need of children

The Minister for Health Profit Maximisation's gimlet gaze has fallen on another load of leaners lurking in the bosom of Team Australia ("Fears for deaf children", August 27). Deaf children may have pulled the wool over the eyes of the ministers who have gone before him, but not Peter Dutton.

Glenn Wood Bardon (Qld)

Come back Pell

I hope Joan Croll (Letters, August 27) doesn't moonlight as a financial adviser. The Melbourne Diocese rate of return of 1.3 per cent is pathetic. Current bank term deposits deliver at least 3 per cent. Where is George Pell when he's needed?

Suzanne Wicks Potts Point

Held to account

Universities, sounding more and more like banks with each passing day ("Unis eye big windfall", August 27).

Peter Lloyd Asquith

Shortchanged

AGL has just advised me that due to the removal of the carbon tax, my electricity bill will reduce 7.8 per cent. That equates to about $100 a year. Someone still owes me $450.

NBN needs to cater for unknown future

Fibre to the node and fibre to the home are completely different ("Cost benefit analysis shows Turnbull plan has $16 billion advantage", August 27). Fibre to the home would future proof broadband for 100 years or more. Fibre to the node is a dated solution. Malcolm Turnbull knows this. We will end up with the broadband equivalent of the M5. The government skimped up front to "save" money and for the past 25 years has been playing catch up. How many billions of dollars in productivity have been lost because of congestion as a result? We need visionaries in communications, not point-scoring politicians.

Matthew Donnellan Rodd Point

NBN cost-benefit analysis, 2014: over the next 10 years only 5 per cent of Australian families will want download speeds of 43 megabits per second. Thomas Watson, IBM president, 1943, allegedly: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

Discuss.

Steve Moore Leumeah

Of the many very sad things about the current government's short-sighted NBN "strategy", the saddest by far is to watch an intelligent man like Malcolm Turnbull compromise his principles to defend the indefensible. As one of the few beacons of hope in a government that seems bereft of long-term vision, it simply cannot be true that Mr Turnbull believes this decimated NBN will stand the test of time. He must cry like a baby after every press conference, and beg Tony Abbott to make him minister for almost anything else.

Rob Landsberry Chatswood

Before the spreadsheet people completely take over the government, let us pause to remember that democracy would fail a cost-benefit analysis.

Peter Fyfe Erskineville

Perkins makes her mark

Rachel Perkins' opinion piece comparing Noel Pearson to her late father Charles is one of the most powerful and beautifully written comments on indigenous affairs that I've read for a long time ("Pearson's critics enjoying 'national sport," August 27). Perkins says she does not have the courage to take national responsibility for the struggle to overcome indigenous disadvantage. She can rest assured that while she continues to make her excellent, informative, creative and relevant films about indigenous issues, and while she continues to write articles like this one, she is contributing more than her fair share.

William Jonas Artarmon

Housing imbalance

Ross Gittins is right: "Increasingly, high-income earners ... cluster close to city centres, while residents on lower incomes ... live around the city fringes" ("We don't know how the other half live", August 27). It is time for city planners to support affordable housing in the inner city for those people who supply the services to the high-income earners. Clover Moore, in a recent speech to the National Press Club, cited the police officer who, after a 12-hour shift, travels to the central coast because that is where he can afford to live. Garbage collectors, shop assistants, teachers and nurses will be encouraged to live in the city if there is affordable accommodation available. This will make the inner suburbs more diverse and more interesting.

Denis O'Rourke Wamberal

Simply ugly vehicles

The motor vehicle industry generally likes to refer to four-wheel-drive "cars" as SUVs, which stands for sports utility vehicles. I have no problem whatsoever with the acronym of SUV, just what it stands for. I think of them as significantly unnecessary vanities. If I have upset some people by writing this, then that can only be a good thing because quite a lot of those people upset me (and many others around them) by the arrogance in the way they use their precious waste machines.

Brian Pymont Frenchs Forest

Gas prices can fall

In the US and Canada, responsible gas development has occurred to the economic benefit of local communities, the nation and to consumers. Yes, where sufficient supply was brought onstream, consumer prices fell. The same can happen in Australia, but not if the resource is left in the ground.

NSW faces a gas shortage which the chair of Manufacturing Australia, Graeme Kraehe, predicts will drive many businesses to the wall; but higher energy prices and increased unemployment seem to be of little concern to Robertson.

Robertson also mention fear of fouled rivers and "contamination by toxic salts", without acknowledging there has been none in 20 years of gas extraction in Queensland and more than a decade at Camden, on Sydney's southern fringe.

Steve Wright director, Energy Resource Information Centre

Distorted views

As we nod sagely and agree with Chris Webb (Letters, August 27) that the image of a racist Australia comes from the actions of an "infinitesimal minority", let's all take the next step and accept that the concept of Islam as a religion that fosters terrorism also arises from the actions of an extremist minority. As we vigorously defend ourselves against being labelled as racist because of the actions of a few we should spare a thought for the majority of the world's Muslims who are being blamed for the actions of a minority.

Susan Threlfall Minto

Peace, but how long?

Unfortunately – the stark reality - how long is the current cease-fire in the Gaza going to last?

Steve Barrett Glenbrook

Identity self evident

The arrogance of the question: "Do you know who I am?" demands a sarcastic, snappy answer ("Do you know who I am', asked MP accused of defamation", August 27). I'd be confident of stirring the possum with the response: "No, I don't. But if you look in your wallet you might find some item of ID that could help you out."